For the last couple of weeks I have been looking for the ultimate start page for my iPod Touch. I use Google Mobile
but it leaves a lot to be desired. Yesterday at MacWorld, Google announced a much improved iPhone interface. The URL is
and it works great. It’s basically a nice RSS interface that is formatted to fit the iPhone format perfectly. The form factor for the iPhone and Touch interfaces are identical, so this benefits me too.
I have been looking for a scheduling tool that I can use to poll my online students to find out a common time we have available. I needed something web based and free. Today I found Doodle.
Basic features
There is even a tool that lets you export your poll to Excel when you are finished.
I ran across Google Trends yesterday. I was reading through my news reader while watching the football game. I clicked over to Google Trends and made a quick realization.
Based on the searches people were doing right now, there were a lot of people watching what I was watching. The Packers game was on. The top searches
The names were all of people playing in the game. Don’t let that last one fool you. There were a lot of commercials advertising a new show called “Comanche Moon.” When the first game ended, the searches shifted to names from the second game.
The networks must use this data to determine what people are watching and what they are thinking about. Better yet, what if a school could get a Google appliance that will show local search trends. Maybe there is something already out there now.
If you could choose three people as the most prominent people in educational technology, who would you select? This is the question I posed to one of my classes. I gave no ground rules. We have no text book with a chapter that discussions this. It’s wide open.
Pick three and give the reasons for selecting each.
If you think about this question in a different context, it could be easy to answer. Name the three most important people in the history of American government. In technology, it would be easier to list the three most important people in the world of personal computers or in the development of the Internet.
Educational technology is more obscure. The entry in Wikipedia wasn’t created until 2005, four years after most topics were entered. There is no standard introductory text that is used in edtech. In fact, most of the people I know in this field are self-taught.
It will be interesting to see the names that make the list.
During the games today I saw Apple’s latest commercials. One says Leopard is better and faster than Vista and the other focuses on Time Machine, Apple’s new backup software.
It’s been a while since I have looked at the trends at W3Counter. Back in October, Apple had a jump from from 3.79% to 4.46% in just ten days.
It looks like things have cooled down a little as Apple was at 4.56% in December. During that same time period, Vista has gone from 4.14% to 4.74%, passing Apple.
They must still be on Christmas break because the last update was Dec 1. It will be interesting to see how January looks with all the new computers purchased for the holidays. My money is on Vista going ahead even more. Any takers?
